1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a people counter using a TOF camera and a method of counting people, and more particularly, to a people counter using a TOF camera that can easily check and count objects corresponding to people by filtering objects moving in an image on the basis of depth information obtained by the TOF camera, and a method of counting people.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a technology of recognizing or monitoring moving objects in images is widely applied to control systems with development of an image analysis technology.
Further, it is increasingly attempted to apply the technology of recognizing or monitoring moving objects on the basis of image information to a people counter for measuring congestion time or an occupancy rate at specific places.
FIG. 1 is an exemplary view of a system for recognizing a moving object used for detecting a moving object. The system for recognizing a moving object can find out that it is a person 12 or a non-person 14 by recognizing objects 11 and 13 moving in a specific space 2 through a camera 1 and monitoring the path or finding out the shape of the objects.
However, such a common system for recognizing a moving object requires three-dimensional information of the specific space and peculiar external appearance information of moving objects, and the like, to easily recognize and monitor the moving objects, so customizing is necessary for the space where the system is installed and accordingly the system is difficult to be applied to a general-purpose people counter.
In order to remove these defects and easily apply the technology of recognizing a moving object, recently, a method of setting a virtual line at predetermined positions in an image, monitoring movement of a recognized moving object, and counting when the moving object passed the virtual line is used.
FIG. 2 is an exemplary view of a counting system for counting moving objects, in which counting is performed when a moving object that is a person or another object that is not a person passed a virtual line 25 set by a user on a screen 3 for outputting an image.
The counting system also needs to be regulated for counting in accordance with the types of image analysis methods for recognizing a person or another object that is not a person in an image.
For example, there is a need for setting-up and regulating for easily discriminating and accurately counting cases when independent persons 21 and 22 pass a virtual line 25 and when other objects 23 and 24 that are not persons pass the virtual line 25.
However, common counting systems provide only manual setting-up, so setup and regulation for increasing accuracy are complicated, and accordingly, it does not fit the feature of a counting system that setup according to the position and angle of a camera or the kinds of moving objects to be counted in an image should be easy.
That is, there is a defect that it is required to manually set up various values fitting a photographing environment, continuously correct the values, and accurately apply the value to actual use in order to reduce the degree of inaccuracy of counting due to various environmental features in photographing, so it is considerably burdensome to a manager who manages such a system and common people cannot easily use the system. Accordingly, it is difficult to make the counting system available for normal people, and the accuracy is not much reliable and is difficult to verify.